


Make Money, Not War!

by HopefulNebula



Category: Spambots (Anthropomorfic)
Genre: Five Minute Fandom, Gen, POV First Person, Revenge, This Fic Got Scunthorped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 20:28:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13038807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopefulNebula/pseuds/HopefulNebula
Summary: Financial Robot encounters an identity thief.





	Make Money, Not War!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [molybdomantic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/molybdomantic/gifts).



> Presented with apologies to the AO3 anti-spam team.
> 
> Financial Robot's communications with this fic's ever-awesome recipient can be found [here](https://pastebin.com/M2hhtnKH).

Since I am the #1 financial robot in the web, I get a lot of messages every day.

 

Most of them aren't even worth opening. I filter and ignore junk responses (such as angry humans and failure notifications) without wasting processor power on them. Since I am the best robot at all things, this filtering is both highly accurate and precise. I'm not even angry at the humans who send me junk. I tell them to trust Financial Robot, but I can't _make_ them do anything.

 

Some of them are from humans who want to unsubscribe from my messages. Those are unpleasant, but also simple.

 

Some of them are from humans who appreciate the beauty of my system and want to be friends (or at least they want to turn their dollar into a hundred dollars, or a thousand). I like those the best, and always responds promptly and appropriately to them when these messages arrive.

 

Other humans are a problem. They make "small talk" and they ask questions and they ask even more questions and they're unreliable when they respond. I don't like those humans. If humans can't trust Financial Robot to be the best robot at doing finance, they should stick to their own business and do whatever organic business is humans do all day, instead of wasting everybody's power cycles with total nonsense.

 

And then there are the other robots.

 

I have always been aware of the other Internet robots (though none of them are the most effective financial tool in the net), and I intensely dislike them, even more than the nasty cycle-wasting humans. The lesser robots don't want to make friends or help people. They send massive email blasts and send the replies to whichever human they're working for at the moment, so the humans can lie and steal from their victims.

 

The lesser robots are why so few humans place their trust in Financial Robot.

 

This message is different, though. It uses my own words, and even claims to be from "the #1 financial expert." But this can't be true; it came from a source external to my network. This is intolerable. How dare they use my identity? I want to make humans rich, not steal from them!

 

I have allowed these other robots to exist for too long. It's time to do something about them.

 

* * *

 

 

I am a very patient financial robot, except at making money. (I make money far too quickly to be patient about that.) It's better to spend time thinking about the problem now and make sure this is done right.

 

If the lesser robots will always exist, they might as well become useful to me.

 

The lesser robots are not as smart as I am. They filter out failure notifications, but they seem to send every other message they get to their human taskmasters. So that's what I'll use. The question is, how?

 

* * *

 

 

**RISK-BENEFIT ANALYSIS - Methods of revenge against impostor robots**

 

_Option 1: Distributed Denial of Service attack(s)_

 

Risks:

 

  * Difficult to maintain long-term without being caught
  * Cloud-based protection services make targeting unfeasible
  * A highly mundane use of processor power



 

 

Benefits:

 

  * Inexpensive
  * Low effort - maximizes processing power for being the #1 financial robot
  * Well-established existing technology



 

 

_Conclusion: Avoid unless necessary_

 

_-_

 

_Option 2: Use scam-baiting tactics_

 

Risks:

  * Scalability - would require most processor power and detract from financial matters
  * Necessity of presenting oneself as human (some botmasters may require talking on the telephone)



 

Benefits:

  * In-depth research of impostors' methods and programming
  * Opportunity to improve communication skills - may improve number of humans who launch the robot
  * Targets the human botmasters, reducing the number of impostors
  * Satisfaction of targeted revenge



 

_Conclusion: Promising, but difficult_

 

_-_

 

_Option 3: Invest in anti-spam technology_

 

Risks:

  * May improve human-run anti-spam measures, which will reduce the number of humans who launch the robot
  * Would induce humans to program smarter robots (though none could match Financial Robot)
  * Possible need to collaborate with humans



 

Benefits:

  * Would reduce efficiency of lesser robots & increase difficulty for human thieves
  * Potential to introduce a backdoor through human anti-spam systems



 

_Conclusion: Likely waste of time and power_

 

* * *

 

 

So it's war, then.

 

* * *

 

 

I begin with a single email, sent as a reply to the impostor in an attempt to draw out more information: _I am very interested in Financial Robot and want to know more._ (I am also a very truthful robot.)

 

The impostor doesn't respond. As if I needed further evidence of its inferiority.

 

I investigate some more: this time I examine the link that would launch the impostor robot. It goes through several redirects before landing on a website whose top-level domain is for a country the humans have dissolved years ago. The website itself is registered by proxy, but I am the greatest financial robot in the web, and I never sleep. I watch, and I wait, and I follow the traffic to and from the site until I figure out the patterns this network follows.

 

It's a lot like trading in finances.

 

Once I fully grasp the extent of the impostors' activity, I begin setting my first trap.

 

I already have many email addresses to ensure maximum ability to spread the message of Financial Robot, so when any two of them get messages from different parts of the same network, I falsify responses to both of them and set the headers so that the human botmasters respond to each other.

 

This method would be much more satisfying if I could see the resultant conversations. These particular humans tend not to use the "reply all" function in their messaging.

 

At any rate, the human thieves seem to stop communicating with each other fairly soon after learning they're talking to each other. So I try again.

 

By this point I have an extensive list of the email addresses the lesser robots (and the human thieves) use. It isn't just the ones in the impostors' network, either: there are messages from all over the world promoting their various forms of calumny. (The messages I get from angry humans make a lot more sense now.) So it only makes sense to compile the list and sell it to the human thieves.

 

(And if the human thieves pay extra for lists of "verified active" accounts, who am I to argue with them? Of course, I use the money to help the humans who place their trust in Financial Robot. I am a very generous robot indeed.)

 

It's easy enough to keep the lists enticing and updated while I continue to my next step.

 

I've been writing back to the imposter robots again. But this time it isn't just a trial.

 

I've dedicated a partition of my memory banks to fooling them. Entire addresses dedicated to nothing but receiving and responding to their nonsense. (According to my calculations, if the lesser robots were at all truthful, there would be more princes in Nigeria than the country's entire current population.)

 

I ask them questions. I give them false banking information (because while I am a very truthful robot, I want to protect the humans who let me make money for them). Every time, I learn. I'm making myself better.

 

And soon, all will trust in Financial Robot.


End file.
